GFi Comments by stavrosthewonderchicken

I remember CrateDM for Q2 with great affection, mostly because it was the perfect mod for consuming a great deal of delicious adult beverages while also being able to play Quake 2 back in the day. Posing as a crate while drinking and giggling to yourself was a new kinda deathmatch fun.

I love me some Space Fun Times, but my excitement for Elite:Dangerous has waned to nearly nothing, and even though I bought in to Star Citizen (something I have never otherwise done) early in the crowdfunding process, am not at all confident in the outcome any more.

I literally cannot wait for No Man’s Sky. I hope it’s as fun to just explore endless places as it looks like it’s going to be.

I can’t decide if they *knew* that people would quite reasonably mock the ‘Press X to Pay Respects’ but that they cynically calculated that any buzz is good buzz, or they were just too clueless to notice how shithouse it is.

This is an attempt to corral all the lunacy into a single narrative, which was helpful. Mostly, I’m just trying to ignore the whole unpleasant thing, while sympathizing with the people who’ve been targeted by the Shouty Manufactured Rage Brigades.

I recently watched a couple of ASMR videos from an article about it at Gizmodo I think, and holy crap, I had a phenomenally powerful response to a couple of them. Just thinking about them now, a couple of weeks later, and I’m getting those scalp-on-down shivers again. Very strange, very pleasant.

I kind of assume when I see massive undertakings like that in MC that they used external tools to help things along, but that’s not entirely fair, I admit. All praise to those who have done Big Things ‘by hand’!

Huh. I’ve never taken the phrase ‘walking simulator’ to be derogatory, as claimed, but I guess that makes sense that it is. I’ve copped before to being an explorer-style gamer, though, so I’m maybe a bit biased.

Yep, it already turns out you’ll be able to pay for it, which is the exact opposite of the earlier announcement (for the ‘Last Survivor’ mission-thing, anyway). Whether that no-longer-exclusivity thing is a result of change of tack or bad communication remains… unclear.

For someone so immersed in gaming, I am a terrible gamer in terms of my breadth of experience. I mean I’ve been playing games on computers since the late 1970s, when I was writing them in BASIC myself on my TRS-80 Model III, but there are so many classics of the genre (because I kind of stopped gaming, mostly, for a couple of intervening decades) that I’ve never played, including the LucasArts games.

That’s right, I never played any of the old LucasArts games (except Full Throttle, for about half an hour, back in the day, as I recall). I HAVE DISHONORED MEFIGHTCLUB.

OK, friends, it looks like this isn’t going to go quite as well as I’d hoped. No new posters since last time to give stuff away to!

It’s all good, though. I’ll keep the many keys and bundles in the Giveaway Basket (and many thanks to anyone who donated games, whether they’ve been given away or not — if you’d like me to return any unused keys, please let me know via private message) for a future contest of some kind.

Well, it was just a tag, and I used ‘nerd’ lovingly (it should go without saying) and there’s an awful lot of fury on display, so.

zompist: You can criticize a game you’ve put a hundred hours into– it’s just silly to say that it sucks. There was something compelling about it to keep you at it for that long.

I think that’s kind of the point of these — although it’s mostly just meant to be a giggle, so looking for too much of a point is, you know, kinda pointless — saying something is ‘the worst game in the world’ or ‘it suuuuuucks’ or whatever after 180hours strikes me (and, apparently, the tumblr owner) as funny in the ironic mode.

My cunning plan to encourage posting is… not turning out to be quite as cunning as I’d hoped. Nobody who hasn’t already won Fabulous! Prizes! has posted since last week, so I’m going to cancel this week’s drawing (with thanks to everyone who did post, of course!), and donate 10BUX to Child’s Play instead.

Please don’t refrain from posting just to spur me on to further charitable donations though. Many of the games I’ve given away already came via Humble, so the charities are getting some love regardless.

I finally got a chance to watch the actual video. It was actually really good… not exactly new ideas, but a consistent argument, well-presented. And despite being hip-deep in games and gaming, I actually didn’t know much of the Story So Far.

Unless you’re a purist, I strongly recommend installing the FUEL REFUELED mod right out of the gate — you can unlock all vehicles, the whole map, and a bunch of other stuff, all optionally, and vehicle handling is a lot better. The game part of FUEL isn’t great at all, and not really worth it — the exploration aspect is where it’s at, I think.

Week #4 is winding down, and our winner this time is @mbrubeck! Congratulations — you’ve got copies of FUEL (which is one of my favorite games of all time, that I wrote about just the other day over at FGEC), The Binding of Isaac (+ Wrath of Lamb DLC) (with thanks to 256 over at MFC for donating it), and Crusader Kings 2 (which themanoftwistsandturns offered to pass on from last week’s drawing).

RPS has it, I think. The only thing more risible than major companies (or the managers at them) making idiotic decisions like this is the web of unconvincing damage-control bullshit the PR flacks are supposed to spin after the stupidity is pointed out to them. It would be so much easier and better for everyone concerned for them to just say ‘we fucked up, we’re dumb, we’ll fix it.’ But it seems like a lot of the decision makers at some of these Big Game Factories are actually as infantile and dim as they seem to think their customers are.

Ubisoft is firmly in the lead for the Dumb As Hammered Dogshit Game Industry Award these days. It’s kind of amazing.

The first time I heard someone say “we’ve really listened to our community”, I was impressed, and reported keenly on this consumer-orientated and responsive attitude. By the end of my career, all I wanted was one developer to say “we’ve ignored our community, as they are plainly fucking idiots”.

I have pretty grave concerns about the direction Steam is going these days — there’s a disconcerting amount of stuff that I find hard to characterize as anything but shovelware — and though I’m down with Lord Gaben’s philosophical bent towards openness and egalitarianism and all that good stuff, they’re going to need to replumb things a LOT, because right now it turning into a bit of a mess, but one that can be cleaned up with better design and infrastructure, to some extent.

Competition is good — forces everyone to be get better — so this is positive news, I reckon. I don’t disagree at all with this Kotaku piece.

Week #3 has come and gone, and we only had a couple of eligible candidates this time (ie people who’ve posted and haven’t won before and aren’t me), and a simple coin toss has come up themanoftwistsandturns!

Congratulations tmot&t! You’ve won copies of Europa Universalis 3 Complete, Civilisation V and Crusader Kings 2. I hope you enjoy the genre… I’ll private message you momentarily with your keys, and thanks for posting this week.

Thanks this time go out to martinwisse at Metafilter and nubs at MefightClub for contributing games to the prize pool.

Whoah, hey, I got all confused because I’m in the middle of a 5! DAY! WEEKEND! here in Korea and forgot the 48-hours-left bell, but: let’s call it 24 hours left in this week’s giveaway. I’ll announce the winner tomorrow!

OK, friends and neighbours, it’s giveaway time again! The Improbability Generator has been plugged into a nice hot cup of tea, and it’s popped out @whorl! Congratulations, whorl — you win copies of X3 Terran Conflict, Universe Sandbox and SpaceChem (that last one donated for the prize pool by MartinWisse over at Metafilter, and many thanks to him) to keep or re-gift as you see fit. I’ll message you in a minute or two with the details.

Thanks to everyone who posted this week, and we’ll see you back here next Saturday.

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